Avonlea's Brightest Son
by Laurie1
Summary: The events of Anne of Green Gables from the perspective of Gilbert Blythe. After returning from three years out west, Gilbert's life had finally returned to normalcy. But then the arrival of a certain red-headed orphan turns it upside-down...
1. A Welcome Homecoming

**Avonlea's Brightest Son**

**Author**: Laurie

**Author email**: laurie078@aol.com

**Spoilers**: AoGG

**Rating**: PG

**Summary**: After spending three years out west while his father recuperated his health, Gilbert Blythe's life had finally returned to normalcy. With a crack of the slate, however, the Cuthberts' adopted orphan Anne Shirley turned his complacent routine of school, chores and good-natured torment upside-down. Anne's influence, if antagonistic, launches the matter-of-fact Gilbert on a journey of discovery: of self, of Anne, and of the allure of things unseen.

**Author's Note**: This narrative is an attempt to trace the events of L.M. Montgomery's _Anne of Green Gables_ from a Gilbert-centric, although omniscient, perspective. Thus all the rules and events of canon apply. Naturally, L.M. Montgomery couldn't include _every_ detail of Anne's life; the new events that I will describe are also an attempt to fill in the blanks of what she left out. 

**Disclaimer**: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Lucy Maud Montgomery and her heirs, and various publishers, including but not limited to Scholastic Inc., and Bantam Books. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended. Only the few characters you do not recognize belong to me. I have taken the most liberties, out of necessity, with the Blythe family, and have striven to keep everyone else strictly in character as dictated by L.M. Montgomery. At times I will extract and build on passages from canon; all of these will be cited from the Scholastic Inc. Apple Paperbacks edition. 

**Chapter Summary: **In which a lot of context and background information is provided. Gilbert and the Blythes return to Avonlea from New Brunswick. There are meetings, greetings, reminiscences, gossip and a few bumps on the head. 

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**Chapter 1: A Welcome Homecoming**

            _"I guess Gilbert Blythe will be in school today," said Diana. "He's been visiting his cousins over in __New Brunswick__ all summer and he only came home Saturday night. …he's used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He's only in the fourth book although he's nearly fourteen. Four years ago his father was sick and had to go out to __Alberta__ for his health and Gilbert went with him. They were there three years and Gil didn't go to school hardly any until they came back."_

_                                                ~_Anne of Green Gables_, "A Tempest in the School Teapot"_

**Late September 1876**

            "Bright River, 20 miles!"

            The conductor didn't notice the sleeping, curly-haired boy lying on the seat below, head perched precariously atop a battered copy of the Fourth Royal Reader, until his bellow had boomed through the corridor. _Then_ he noticed him with a vengeance.

            "Wha?" Startled from his peaceful slumber, Gilbert Blythe shot stark upright, or, rather, would have, had his head not struck the conductor's heavy clipboard first. 

            The conductor jumped back with astonishment as the Reader flew tumbling down the aisle, nearly dropping said clipboard in the process. Gilbert's hand flew immediately to his head, where he could feel a throbbing bump already starting to form. "Owwwww…," he groaned. 

            "I'm terrible sorry, laddie, didn't see you snoozing down there," the conductor said, grinning.

            "You're lucky we're _getting off_ at Bright River," Gilbert mumbled, continuing to rub his head. "Else I'd…"

            But what else Gilbert would do was never to be revealed, as John Blythe's loud guffaws from the adjacent seat presently drowned out all other forms of communication.

            The conductor retrieved the Reader from the floor and returned it to a bleary Gilbert.

            "What a way to begin your school year, laddie!" he laughed. "You got all the sense knocked out of you before you even started!"

            The conductor's chuckles, fortunately fading as he made his way down the train, did not serve to improve Gilbert's already groggy mood.

            "Luckily I've got sense to spare," Gilbert said to his still grinning father, in a valiant attempt to make light of the situation.

             "Especially if the information in here was seeping into that brain of yours," his father said, giving him a jarring clap on the shoulders that did not exactly help matters. "Is that how you do it, Gil? By using books for pillows?" He took the offending Reader from Gilbert's lap. "No wonder it's so ragged."

            "You know it used to be Andrew Fletcher's, father," Gilbert said with a sigh. Keeping his books in mint condition clearly had not been a priority of Gilbert's elder cousin; judging from the rather thorough sketches in the margins, drawing unflattering caricatures of unsuspecting schoolmasters had taken precedence.

            "So it did, so it did."

            "You're sure you're all right, Gilbert?" Cecilia Blythe asked, all concern now that the latest installment in the Charlottetown newspaper's serial novel had been fully digested.

            "Yes, mother. Only a small bump, honest. I'm reasonably sure the three R's are irrevocable, anyway." Gilbert paused. "Although I suppose that has only two R's." He grinned inwardly.

             "After all, a nearly fourteen-year-old boy in the fourth class can't afford to lose any sense," Cecilia joked, rather tactlessly. She smiled at Gilbert, reached across the aisle to still more tactlessly tousle his hair, and then turned to face her husband. "John, did you remember to write the Fletchers and tell them when to meet us at Bright River? Because in her last letter Edith said…"

            Just barely refraining from flinching in pain yet again, Gilbert forced a smile in return. As the train made its way steadily toward the Bright River station, his own thoughts pushed their way to the forefront and began to drown out his parents' grown-up conversation. 

            His mother's innocently-meant joke had hit a nerve. It wasn't, after all, _his_ fault that he was so far behind in school.

            "It wasn't anyone's fault," he told himself suddenly. "I was _glad_ to go with father." 

            And he was telling himself the truth, almost completely. Even at age nine, Gilbert Blythe had been a truly loyal son with a precocious sense of duty. Four years ago, Gilbert's great-uncle Dr. David Blythe had been down to Avonlea from Glen St. Mary for a holiday visit. When Dr. Dave noted Gilbert's father's short breaths and pallid looks, he had grown immensely worried and promptly dragged his nephew John to Charlottetown for a full examination. The city doctor had confirmed Dr. Dave's fears, predicting dire consequences if John persisted with the heavy toil of farming in the Island's thick, rather moist air. 

            Naturally, John had pshawed and prevaricated as much as any self-respecting Blythe of Avonlea would have been expected, but he and he alone knew how weak and dizzy that season's planting had left him. Cecilia, having a sensibility slightly more attuned to the quick, inescapable changeability of health than her husband, had urged him to follow Dr. Dave's advice and travel immediately to the open air of the West to ensure a full recuperation.  

            Of course all of this had been debated and done surreptitiously above Gilbert's innocent young head, or so his elder relatives thought; however, Gilbert was a discerning nine-year-old. His utter lack of surprise when his mother took him aside one day to ask if he would like "to go on a long vacation with Father" astonished the entire Blythe clan.

            "You mean to care for Father while the fresh prairie air cures his lungs?" Gilbert had responded matter-of-factly.

            Cecilia Blythe had been speechless. Dr. Dave had raised his eyebrows so high that they nearly collided with his hairline.

            "Of course I'll go. Oh, Mother, I'd do anything if Father would just get better. But Uncle Dave…how bad is it, really? Father won't die, will he?" Although Gilbert had practiced saying these words stoutly in his head several times over the previous few days, he was unable to keep a quaver out of his voice.

            "Not with someone like you to watch out for him, sonny," Dr. Dave had replied, shaking Gilbert's hand solemnly.

            A week later, on the day school adjourned for the summer, Gilbert had walked slowly home from the learning and friends he delighted in. His mother had explained to him that the cure wouldn't be instantaneous, that it could take a long time for rest and the prairie climate to help Father get better. Gilbert had understood implicitly what his mother _hadn't_ said: that he would be missing possibly even a few years of school and of the naïve childhood merriment granted to most boys. That day, Gilbert, as a certain red-headed girl would nine years later, "had looked…duty courageously in the face and found it a friend."* It helped, of course, that all the other boys at school had been jealous of his impending "Western adventure" and educational hiatus. While rather excited to travel and see the prairie and mountains, Gilbert felt sure that unlike his ilk he would indeed miss school, not to mention his friends. But what was that in comparison with saving one's father's life? 

            Gilbert and John had thus journeyed off to Alberta. The Blythes' small savings had covered transportation and a meager starting board at a rather spartan but nonetheless respectable boarding house. Dr. Dave and John's aunt Ruth in Charlottetown sent what cash they could spare. John's brother-in-law George Fletcher, who lived next door to the Blythes in Avonlea, had taken over running the farm, while Cecilia sewed in genteel fashion to keep up with expenses.

            John's convalescence had lasted three years, in which Gilbert, who at nine had been precocious in mind but not quite yet in body, grew manfully while performing odd jobs for the boarding house master and nursing his father. Between the two he had very little time to attend the makeshift local school, and so contented the thirst of his insatiable brain by reading everything he could get his hands on, either to himself or aloud to his father. Pioneer journals there were aplenty, but the remaining tomes Gilbert had managed to collect resulted in a rather sketchy library. There had been an illustrated, encyclopedia volume "D"; Ann Radcliffe's _The Mysteries of Udolpho_; an ancient medical textbook, possibly written in the mid-18th century; a gardening how-to, with many, if I may be pardoned the pun, flowery passages; a ladies' guide to proper etiquette, and of course the Bible they had brought from home. Gilbert read all of them multiple times, with little else to do after his father fell asleep in the early evening but reread everything over again. He worked out sums in the margins of the pioneer newspapers until they became second nature, he memorized the spelling of possibly every "D" word in existence, and he learned both the official and pioneer slang names for every Canadian town west of the Rockies.

            Back in the present, Gilbert glanced past his conversing parents out the window of the train. This was the very same train he and his father had taken upon returning to P.E.I. nearly fourteen months before, after John had made a recovery full enough to satisfy even the most cautious Edmonton specialist. Gilbert had been ecstatic to return to Avonlea, for to him the wild, brown, open excitement of the West paled in comparison to the vividly green, well-worn familiarity of his home. 

            Of course, even a place where time runs as slowly as in Avonlea had naturally seen some changes in Gilbert's three-year absence. Babies had been born: his cousin Andrew Fletcher had a small daughter, Stella; his friend Fred Wright had _two_ younger brothers, Jimmy and Cliffie; the Barrys had another daughter, Minnie May. People had passed on: twins Jacob and Hiram Sloane had died, of unrelated causes (one a heart attack, the other a dose of bad cabbage…at least, they thought it was the cabbage) on the same day 59 and a half years after their birth. People had married…or not: Mrs. Rachel Lynde was _certain_ the minister Mr. Bentley, a widower, had been going to see Catherine Andrews, or at least had a notion of it, until Eliza nipped such an idea in the bud in no uncertain terms. Even the landscape had changed: the Blythe orchard had grown more scraggly than not, Uncle George Fletcher having two farms to run and lacking John Blythe's particular touch.

            But nowhere had the hand of time been more evident, to Gilbert, at least, than at Avonlea School. A new young master, Mr. Theodore Phillips, ruled the roost after kindly Mr. Thompson's long reign ended in retirement. New students, so small that Gilbert had been afraid he would step on one, filled the front seats. Most of his friends, especially those of his age or slightly older, had either graduated to the fifth class or were close to finishing the lengthy curriculum of the fourth, which Gilbert hadn't even commenced. 

            A few of his older mates, jealous both of Gilbert's western travels and the way his newly tall, sturdy build and bright hazel eyes seemed to impress the young Avonlea females, contrived to cause Gilbert to feel his years of absence acutely indeed. Rob Wright, Sam Boulter and Jerry Bell combined forces to attempt to make Gilbert Blythe, former undisputed leader of their class, as behind and out of things as possible. Poor Gilbert bore their taunts as best he could by trying mightily to put forth a mask of unconcern. 

            He was helped in this by both a few loyal friends who welcomed him back as if he'd never left, such as Fred Wright and Sam and Oliver Sloane, as well as other, slightly younger boys like Charlie Sloane, Moody Spurgeon MacPherson, Ned Wright, and Arty Gillis, who easily accepted the sharp, agile, mischievous Gilbert as a leader in their little circle. The Avonlea girls – Gilbert had never before noticed that there were quite so many girls in Avonlea – also embraced him with open arms. As one of his favorite victims, Diana Barry, later put it elegantly, they quite readily allowed him to "torment their lives out,"** for all their pretended outrage. 

            Despite these more loyal classmates, along with his own inner efforts to shrug off these barbs, the snubs of his former friends had hurt Gilbert acutely. A less inept teacher than Mr. Phillips possibly would have noted the special case and given the bright, nearly thirteen-year-old boy extra lessons to enable him to skip ahead and attempt to keep up with his class. Mr. Phillips, however, barely twenty himself, had been somewhat more concerned with the interests of pretty but rather thick fifteen-year-olds like Prissy Andrews than quick-witted youths like Blythe with oodles of promise, and so Gilbert had taken up with the fourth class beginners and led them throughout the year without doing a scrap of homework. Though this produced in Gilbert no great love for his schoolmaster, the time spent caring for his father had endowed him with a maturity in some respects rather beyond his thirteen years, and if he was a bit mischievous after whipping through division problems in a quarter of the time it took his class, he was never insolent. 

            By the end of last term, even Jerry Bell had rather forgotten the anti-Blythe campaign of the previous fall, and when Gilbert's name had been written up on the porch wall with his sister Julia's in April (to the latter's secret pleasure), he had contented himself with shooting Blythe the required dark glares instead executing the more extreme pummeling. Seeing this, Gilbert wisely kept his expressions of mild displeasure at the turn of events to a minimum, merely commenting teasingly to Charlie Sloane when asked about the latest "Take Notice" that he studied the multiplication table by Julia's freckles. 

            Although, especially in light of his father's remarkable recovery, Gilbert had borne his three-year absence with no complaints and only a few tiny morsels of regret that he invariably crushed as soon as they cropped up in his mind, he had been a bit upset when his parents informed him of their plans for this summer. John and Cecilia had elected to spend a few months on the mainland, and to drop Gilbert off at his Aunt Emily Stanton's in Turtle Creek, New Brunswick, on the way. Gilbert knew that his parents had been busy getting the farm back into sorts over the past year, and that they were treating this summer as a sort of "second honeymoon" by which to get reacquainted after the three years' separation. But couldn't they have done so while he stayed at his Aunt Edith Fletcher's in Avonlea rather than wrenching him away from his friends and familiars yet again?

            Confronted with such a proposal, John and Cecilia, via several ambiguous speeches, had made Gilbert aware that his uncle George and aunt Edith had done too much for them already, thus implicitly conveying the notion that the pride the Blythes were so famous for would allow them to ask for nothing more.

            Gilbert, a cheerful, loyal soul in whom the Blythe streak of pride had already noticeably taken root, had amenably acquiesced, and had contrived to enjoy his summer at Aunt Emily's nearly as much as a summer in Avonlea. Such was not difficult to do, for the Stantons' Turtle Creek, N.B., home was always abuzz. Aunt Emily was as jolly and kindly a figure as her elder sister Cecilia, and she and Uncle Frank, a brewer and wine merchant, had the most interesting stories about their previous travels all over the world. These travels, as Gilbert reflected on more than one occasion, perhaps accounted for the rather odd names they had given their six children, who had been christened without rhyme or reason (or so Gilbert thought) after cities. Fortunately for Madrid (Maddie), Montreal (Monty), Athena, Milwaukee (Millie) and San Francisco (Francis), these appellations were not irrevocably harmful, having reasonably normal nicknames. The smallest Stanton, however, six-year-old Turtle Creek, was not quite so lucky. He went by the initials T.C., crossing his fingers as he told his schoolteacher with round blue eyes wide and unblinking that they stood for Thomas Charles. 

            Gilbert _had_ been rather annoyed when the last week of August brought, rather than his parents themselves as he expected, a letter from Kingsport in their place. As if he weren't behind enough in school already, now he wasn't even to return in time for the year to open! He had wiped all feelings of irritation shamefully away, however, upon reading the epistle, a few rather hastily-written, preoccupied lines from his mother implying that his father was far from well. It had ended up, however, only a nasty case of grippe rather than the relapse the Blythes constantly feared. So now Gilbert, tired from a bonfire thrown by cousins Maddie and Monty the night before, was finally on his way back to Avonlea with his parents, albeit three weeks late.

            Gilbert thought the jarring bump on his head had rather killed sleep for him that afternoon, but in crossing the Canadian plains twice he had become rather adept at sleeping amidst jerks and jolts. He didn't realize that his musings had merged into slumber until his mother shook him awake, forced a few carpetbags into his hand, and dragged him off at the Bright River station. 

            An onslaught of emotions overwhelmed Gilbert as he stepped off the train. He narrowed his eyes slightly at the wisecracking conductor, smiled with appreciation as the bright red and orange and yellow hues of the trees greeted him by exhibiting unmistakably that his favorite Island season, autumn, was beginning, and wriggled in vain as Aunt Edith Fletcher enwrapped him in one of her bone-crushing bear hugs. 

            "I declare, he's taller than me now!" she said, finally backing away. "And he looks more like you every day, John. Soon he'll be looking down at you." She grinned up at her older brother as Gilbert began to lift the valises and bundles into the carriage. 

            Everything finally loaded, Edith Fletcher and the Blythes began the same journey that Matthew Cuthbert and a certain red-headed waif had made the previous spring, though the town of Newbridge, the red roads and the Avenue held much less novelty for Gilbert than for Anne.

            Aunt Edith, whose tongue would never grow rusty from disuse, was full of Avonlea news, especially, John having prevailed upon her to take a rest and allow him to drive, since she didn't have the added distraction of the reins.

            "The Ladies' Aid met at Andrew and Silvia's last week, and I must say that Silvia did the Blythe family proud. Nobody found a fault with her spread excepting Mrs. Jasper Bell, and she's just real aggrieved that Mark Andrews preferred my Andrew to her Edwin for his daughter Silvia."

            Gilbert was only half listening to his aunt, being more absorbed in watching the road ahead carefully so he didn't miss Chester Ross' apple orchard as they came into Spencervale. There was this one tree with a branch that dipped over the road, and if one timed it exactly right…

            Then, just in the midst of Aunt Edith's tale of old Miriam Sloane's measles scare (after seeing mysterious spots on her back in the mirror, she raised a fuss and the Sloanes brought in the doctor and city nurses and everything; the spots had turned out to be moles and Miriam was advised to look at her back in the mirror slightly more often than once every sixty-five years), Gilbert stood halfway up in the buggy and snatched a juicy-looking apple from the branch overhead. Startled from her conversation with Aunt Edith, his mother quickly pulled him down from the back seat.

            "Gilbert Blythe!" she exclaimed, astonished. "What in heaven's name? You could have fallen out and been crushed by the wheel! And what if Mrs. Chester Ross saw you?"

            Gilbert inwardly smiled at the way his mother had equated the two possible consequences. Mrs. Chester Ross was known throughout the area as the model housewife who raised a perfect family. 

            "How could she possibly, mother?" he asked, raising his apple to take a bite. "And I was only up for a split second." But then Cecilia's hand was holding his arm, and though Gilbert had been taller than his mother for over a year, her grip was inexorable as ever.

            "I might as well eat it now that I've got it," Gilbert said logically, trying unsuccessfully to free his arm.

            "Haven't we enough apples at home?" Cecilia asked, also logically, since the Blythe orchard was well-reputed as the largest in the surrounding villages.

            "Not this kind," Gilbert responded. "Plus, if I don't eat it it'll just be wasted."

            Cecilia gave up in despair and let go of her son. "You'd think a body could give one a little help, John," she commented sardonically.

            John Blythe chuckled. "You know, if I hadn't been holding the reins, I'd have had half a mind to do some like thing myself," he said. 

            Cecilia turned back to Edith Fletcher, rolling her eyes as if to wash her hands of the entire affair. 

            "I declare, Gilbert, if you were my son…," Edith began, eyes twinkling.

            "Yesh'm?" said Gilbert, mouth full of apple.

            "How is little Stella, Edith?" Cecilia asked, giving Gilbert a warning glance. 

            Gilbert exchanged silent groans with his father, and continued to dig in to his prize. Now they were to hear of every new dimple and the length of curls and innumerable cute little noises. Aunt Edith dearly loved to talk of her first grandchild.

            "Oh, she's doing splendidly," Edith replied, warming to her favorite subject. "She's got five teeth now, two more than little Jack Gillis has got. Why, just yesterday she said to me, 'Goo-gee.' I think she was trying to say…" 

            Edith stopped abruptly, upon seeing Cecilia contort her face into an expression of horror. Gilbert, having polished off every possible bit of his apple, narrowed his eyes, took aim, and fired the core at a hole in Hezekiah Spencer's white picket fence. "Bulls-eye!" he said happily as it sailed right through.

            "Gilbert Alexander Blythe!" his mother exclaimed. "If I catch you at such a trick again…why, you're nearly fourteen years old, and…"

            "Well, Mother," Gilbert interrupted saucily, "as you reminded me earlier, I_ am_ still in the fourth class at school. If you're going to cast it up to me, can't I at least behave like it?"

            Cecilia Blythe opened her mouth and then closed it, remembering her teasing on the train. "That'll teach me to ever make a joke about you again," she smiled. "Clearly it comes back to haunt me later."

            "Speaking of things that come back to haunt one," Aunt Edith began, transitioning excellently, "Marilla Cuthbert _must_ be regretting keeping that orphan girl of hers."

            Gilbert raised his eyebrows. A few weeks before the Blythes departed for New Brunswick, all of Avonlea had been abuzz with news of the extraordinary variety concerning the almost severely ordinary residence of Green Gables. Apparently the incident of what Gilbert had heard some call "the imported orphan" was still dominating the Avonlea headlines.

            As Gilbert had understood it, mostly from eavesdropping on his mother's or Aunt Edith's conversations with Mrs. Rachel Lynde, Mrs. Harmon Andrews or some equally didactic, newsy type, the story was this: middle-aged siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had sent word with someone that they wanted to adopt a boy from an asylum in Nova Scotia to help with the farm. That in itself had been mind-boggling, for even in Gilbert's rather hazy awareness there was perhaps not a house in Avonlea with which one would less associate the idea of a child than Green Gables. But there was more. As often happens with messages by proxy, confusion reigned, and it had been a girl that the Cuthberts received from the Hopetown asylum instead of the desired boy.

            "Even without the mix-up," Aunt Edith was saying, "it was a mighty perilous step to take, but heavens! I can almost – _almost_, mind you – imagine Marilla and Matthew with a boy, but a girl! And such a girl! Even wild dogs could never get Marilla to admit her mistake, though."

            Gilbert pricked his ears as they passed through Newbridge. Mostly the "gossip exchange" between his mother and Aunt Edith, as he referred to it, was consistently boring, but from time to time they discussed an item of universal interest; now was one of those rare occasions.

            "The Cuthberts have always had a stubborn streak," John commented. "Marilla's got it as much as any of them, I reckon."

            "Well it's in full force now, let me tell you. Marilla won't hear anyone speak a negative word about Anne, however well-meaning. Says she wasn't brought up to know how to behave."

            Privately, Gilbert thought this made a good deal of sense, but knew to keep his opinion to himself.

            "Now, if the Cuthberts were so set on having a boy, why on earth did they keep her when they found out she was a girl?" Cecilia wondered, rather lackadaisical with her pronouns.

            "Heaven only knows," Aunt Edith responded. "They felt sorry for her, I expect. Apparently both her parents died before she was a year old, of a fever or some such thing. They were both teachers – decent enough people, I suppose, for being from Nova Scotia and all." 

            Gilbert rolled his eyes. To hear Aunt Edith talk, one would think the Island was the only place a fellow could be born if he wanted even a chance to turn out respectably. "I guess Anne had lived with a couple different families, taking care of children and doing chores and such, before ending up at the asylum. But no matter how hard her life was before, it seems she's been making life just twice as difficult for the Cuthberts now, let me tell you." 

            Gilbert frowned. He remembered how worried and upset he'd been four years ago when his father was ill, but what was it like to not have _any_ parents – to never even know one's parents? He suddenly felt slightly ashamed, recalling how sorry he'd felt for himself at times just for having one _ill_ parent.

            Aunt Edith had gone quiet and was shaking her head in dismay, as if silently to continue to express her disapproval of the Cuthberts' rash action.

            "Now, this all happened nearly three months ago, Edith. Did so little happen in Avonlea while we were away that people are still talking about Anne? Her name _is_ Anne, isn't it?" Cecilia prompted. She had as natural a curiosity as anyone, and an adopted orphan from Nova Scotia, who persisted in being a girl when expected to be a boy, and who was to be brought up by such a confirmed spinster as Marilla Cuthbert – well, that was drama at its most sensational in Avonlea.

            "Yes, Anne Shirley," Aunt Edith answered. "And if Anne's name is still on Avonlea tongues, well…it's because the likes of her have never been seen before in this town, that's certain," She nodded vigorously.

            "Well, I don't know but that Avonlea could use some new blood," John interjected. As Gilbert had frequently observed, the contrary opinions that his father left unsaid in most cases were aired out more often than not during discussions with his younger sister.

            "Well, blood is the right term, I'll give you that," Aunt Edith said, "for Anne's temper is hot-blooded enough, I understand. Mind you, right after you left for N.B., Rachel Lynde went on an errand to Green Gables, and such a reception as she got! Why, Rachel had only just met Anne when she was _flown at_ and insulted as 'rude and impolite' and who knows what else. She said she'd never seen such a frenzy in her life."

              Gilbert bit his lip to keep from snickering. Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of the kindest, most generous women in Avonlea, whose cookie jar was always full and open to boys of all sizes and sorts. But she had a tendency to come on rather strong at times, which Gilbert, whose streak of mischievousness had always been rather prominent, knew firsthand.

            "Of course," Aunt Edith continued, furrowing her brow, "Rachel also said that two days later, Marilla marched Anne down to her house and Anne apologized, thoroughly and sincerely."

            "So the jury's still out, then?" Cecilia asked, smiling.

            "Well, I suppose that's one way to put it," she admitted. "That Anne's different from every other Avonlea girl is certain enough, but exactly what sort of girl she is remains to be seen, I suppose. Oh, Cecilia, if only you'd been in church…let me see, about two months ago! Anne came by herself and sakes' alive, her hat! She'd bedecked herself with more flowers than you'd see at a wedding!"

            "What's wrong with that?" Gilbert asked vaguely. Didn't all women's hats have flowers?

            His mother and aunt both stared at him a moment. "It just isn't done," Aunt Edith finally replied, turning from him back to Cecilia. "It was a sight, let me tell you. And Pacifique's brother Jerry Buote (Matthew hired Jerry on at Green Gables to help with the farm, you know, in absence of their intended orphan boy). Anyway, Jerry told Pacifique that Anne's always wandering about the fields talking to herself, crazy-like. One day a few weeks back when Jerry was clearing some underbrush out back she spotted a butterfly nearby and stared – just sat there and stared at the same spot – for nearly ten minutes, by which time it had flown off and then some. Then she said to him, she said, 'Jerry, have you ever thought that if you'd just grab on to the bottom of the butterflies' wings, you'd lose all your earthly cares and transcend trifling impediments like weight and gravity and just rise up, up, up? I know that really butterflies die in the winter and their eggs hatch into caterpillars which become new butterflies, but isn't it much more fulfilling to imagine that they rise to a special place in the clouds?' There was more, I'm sure, but it's beyond me to remember it. It's astonishing Jerry recalled as much as he did, though I suppose if someone made such a speech to me I'd not soon forget it."

            Aunt Edith paused for breath as they approached Theodore White's place.

            "For heaven's sake, slow down a little, John," she said, grinning. "Or else Mrs. Theodore is liable to come running out and promptly sweep up the dust my horse kicks up onto her lawn."

            John laughed and urged the horse a bit faster.

            "Do you know how old Anne is, Aunt Edith?" Gilbert asked curiously. 

            "Planning your next conquest, are you, Gil?" his father asked him, aside. Gilbert glared at him and turned back to face his mother and aunt. Some things were simply not to be dignified with a response.

             "Around eleven, I think, though my niece Tillie (George's sister Janet's daughter, you know) says she's in the fourth class. I can't imagine that she's had much time for schooling, what with the life she's had. But Tillie says that Anne's real bright and that all the girls at school like her tremendously. She and Diana Barry have become inseparable, and Mrs. Barry is so particular over whom Diana associates with. If Anne meets with her approval she'll meet with anyone's, including mine, I'd say. Tillie says she behaves normally enough in school, though she tends to stare into space a bit too often. But far be it from me to completely criticize the girl," she concluded.

            His mother and aunt moved on to less interesting subjects – something about quilts for the heathen – as they approached Avonlea and dusk began to fall. Gilbert had been looking forward to school for its own sake, and now on top of it all there was an interesting new personage to meet. Although Avonlea had many merits, even a loyal son like Gilbert had to admit that diversity in personality, especially among the Avonlea schoolgirls, was not always one of them.

            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

            The evening of their return having been spent largely in walking around the farm, catching up on this planting and that new hog with Uncle George, Gilbert opened his eyes very grudgingly the next morning, and only at his mother's most insistent shaking. 

            "I _knew_ I shouldn't have let you stay up so long at that bonfire two nights ago," Cecilia commented reprovingly. "You're lucky there isn't any Sunday school today, or else I'd have awakened you an hour ago…. According to your aunt, Miss Rogerson went to visit a sick uncle, and they couldn't find anyone to take her class on such short notice."

            Though Gilbert deemed it perhaps sacrilegious to thank God that anyone had taken ill, he _did_ consider it a rather fortuitous confluence of events. He atoned for this dodgy thought with a quick prayer for the man's rapid recovery.

            "Ohhhhh…," Gilbert groaned as his mother opened the blinds and a stream of bright sunshine beat on his face. He covered his eyes with his hands and clumsily sat up. This proved a rather unwise idea, however – "Ow!" he exclaimed as his head struck the bedboard, a collision rendered all the more painful due to its location at the still-sore spot from the previous day on the train. 

            "Perhaps," he thought ruefully, "this is a sort of Almighty retribution for my earlier transgression." Such a divine revelation did not, however, make the pain go away, and he moaned again, more loudly this time to induce his mother's sympathy.

            Cecilia, however, was more concerned with the state of her son's bedroom than that of his skull. The dresser and suitcase both stood half-opened, with clothes strewn indiscriminately on the floor between them.

            "Gilbert Blythe! Did I, or did I not, tell you to put all – _all_ – of your clothes away last night? Dust has been gathering on this floor all summer and now it's made its way onto your good shirts!"

            "Oh, but Mother…I was so tired…and I'm in pain…my head…have pity on a fellow, won't you?"

            "I've half a mind to make _you_ do all the extra laundry," Cecilia grumbled, gingerly gathering the offending dust-ridden shirts.

            Now fully awake, Gilbert's logical side quickly showed itself. "You know, really, if you did that the shirts would surely end up missing buttons, or the wrong color, or some such disaster. Unless of course you showed me how to wash them properly, but then again that would take more time than just doing it yourself, and it would defeat the purpose you had in the first place." He smiled up at her.

            "Heaven grant me patience," Cecilia thought silently. She knew better than to argue with her son; his quick wits could circumvent hers, or seemingly so, nearly every time.

            "Here, this one _looks_ clean," she said, handing him a shirt that had found its way, luckily, onto the bedpost. "Try to unearth some decent trousers for church in this mess. And be smart about it, won't you? Your breakfast is getting cold."

            Gilbert stretched and arose slowly out of bed as his mother swept out of the room, dusty shirts in hand, muttering something about "needless bonfires" and "disobedient sons who think they can get out of every argument with erudite displays of logic." He pulled a pair of trousers from his suitcase, gave them a precursory inspection, shrugged, and stepped into them. 

            Buttoning his shirt, Gilbert glanced out the window and, in a reaction diametrically opposite to his earlier sleep-deprived grumbles, grinned at the bright, sunshiney day. Though he was tired and his head still throbbed, he _was _back in Avonlea, and though he'd always thought Mr. Bentley's sermons rather dull, he _would_ get to see his friends.

            Thus it was a thoroughly high-spirited Gilbert who wolfed down his breakfast, good-naturedly shrugged off his mother's half-scolding, half-teasing barbs, and set off with his parents on the short walk to the Avonlea church.

             "All's right with the world," Gilbert thought as myriad familiar figures drove past them on the road, struggling simultaneously to doff his cap to the bustling, be-frilled ladies and wave at the gruff, starched-up men. Avonlea was where he was most _himself_, where he felt the most comfortable, where he understood the order of things. In Avonlea he knew where he stood: he was Gilbert Blythe, brilliant student, steadfast farm helper, dutiful son, instigator of innocent mischief, and merciless teaser of girls.

            Presently this aspect of his role came into play as the Barry carriage tottered past, affording Gilbert an excellent opportunity to make a horrendous face at Diana (behind his mother's back, of course). Her response of black curl-tossing mock outrage was somewhat subverted by the dimpled blush that followed as he proceeded to grin up at her, realizing that perhaps face-making was not quite palatable on Sundays.

            Though only thirteen, Gilbert was not unaware of the favorable impression his sparkling hazel eyes, sturdy build and wavy brown locks made on his female classmates. They practically fell over themselves to partner with him in various schoolyard games, and nearly always responded to his frequent teasing with pretenses of indignation similar to that of Diana Barry. Despite several schoolgirl ministrations attempting to influence him to the contrary, however, his was an indiscriminate teasing – he had never zeroed in on a particular target, preferring to torment the sex in general. Diana and Ruby Gillis were the acknowledged beauties of their set, and he supposed subconsciously that if he were to "like" any one girl it would be one of them (though he secretly longed for Ruby's elder sister Susan to notice him as something other than a little boy whose head she'd like to pat). Nonetheless, he deemed himself rather too young to look at girls as anything other than possible comrades (or potential victims). 

             Gilbert sat down next to his parents in the Blythe pew toward the front of the church and proceeded to listen to Superintendent Bell, or, rather, to attempt to listen. Even an entire summer's worth of missed prayers didn't render Mr. Bell less boring and long-winded, Gilbert reflected. He tried to unobtrusively crane his neck around and entertain himself by looking at all the people. Though his family's front pew denoted their prestige in the community, it _did_ make fidgeting a lot more noticeable. 

            He glanced across the aisle at Julia Bell, who was making a valiant show at rapt attentiveness to her father. "Freckles," he mouthed silently, while maintaining a straight face and cherubic countenance. He knew by her reddening cheeks that she'd seen him out of the corner of her eye, though she had to guard her reaction under the watchful eyes of her mother. 

            Presently Mr. Bell paused, and Gilbert looked up hopefully but in vain, as the Superintendent proceeded to drone on. "I really ought to be listening," Gilbert thought with a sudden flash of guilt, "it's only for my own good." But he was again distracted as his eyes flicked across to the Cuthbert pew, which was empty this Sunday. Remembering Aunt Edith's descriptions from the previous evening, he felt a little trickle of disappointment run through his veins, the result of expectant curiosity unsatisfied. 

            "I wonder what the orphan girl is like," Gilbert thought vaguely. "I wonder if she likes it here. Of course she must, given what Aunt Edith said about her history." Gilbert suddenly shuddered and looked over at his parents. "What would I be like if I had no family? Would I be bitter with my lot…jealous of all the millions of happy fellows out there with mothers and fathers? Probably so…I wonder if she's like that? She must be grateful to live with Mr. and Miss Cuthbert, if they're a bit stuffy."

            Mr. Bell finally having concluded, Gilbert took advantage of the break to squeeze his mother's hand and whisper, "I'm awfully sorry for not fully unpacking, Mother – I'll always be neat and orderly from now on, I promise."

            Cecilia Blythe looked down at her son, amazed. "What brought _that_ on?" she wondered to herself. "Could he really have taken Mr. Bell's words about repenting so to heart?"

            After the conclusion of the last hymn, Gilbert walked out of the church with his parents staidly enough. With a single grinning glance back at Cecilia, however, upon exiting he rushed off down the lawn toward a small but increasing congregation of medium-sized boys. 

            "Hallo, Blythe, you're back," Sam Sloane commented laconically as Gilbert joined him and his brother Oliver. "Have a good time in N.B.?" He grinned.

            Gilbert grinned back and nodded. "With six cousins, there was never a dull moment, that's for sure."

            "You're so lucky to get off this old rock," Oliver said. "Nothing ever happens here. Why, the biggest news lately was old great-aunt Miriam's measles…ceptin' she didn't even have 'em!"

            Gilbert laughed, recalling Aunt Edith's tale on the drive home from Bright River. Privately, however, he disagreed with Oliver's assessment. He felt luckier to _be back_ than to have left.

            Presently others began to join their party. "Gil!" Charlie Sloane cried, "Guess what? I found this—"

            "We missed you this summer in baseball, Blythe," Clifton Sloane interrupted, "the White Sands fellows just creamed us, and—" 

            "—the frog actually _ate_ the snail, true's you live, at least, it _must _have done, they were next to each other and I turned my head for a split second, and the snail was _gone_—"

            "—13-2, a total embarrassment…we wouldn't have scored at all if it hadn't been for a remarkable banger by yours truly—"

            "—they were actually _moles_ on her back, can you believe it, she didn't know the difference—"

            "—and old uncle Josiah Sloane's whiskers are _this long_…"

            Gilbert was beginning to feel dizzy. "It's an attack of the Sloanes!" he thought to himself, glancing at the four Sloane brothers and cousins who surrounded him. They were all good friends of his, to be sure, but all together presented a bit too much of what he'd heard his Aunt Edith refer to as "Sloanishness" for him to bear.

            Suddenly, a shrill voice ended the onslaught. "Sam and Oliver," Mrs. Peter Sloane said, dragging them away, "you haven't time to stop and socialize. You know your uncle Bert is coming to tea." She shook her head. 

            The two quickly said good-bye to Gilbert and scurried off to join their father and sister Sophia in the carriage. 

            Mrs. Peter sighed, then turned her sharp eye on her nephews. "Clifton, I'm sure your mother's looking for you, too." Gilbert suddenly was glad that he had only the normal amount of relations in Avonlea, rather than the seemingly infinite Sloane connection.

            She hesitated, but finally determined that she didn't dare say anything to Charlie. Mrs. Peter and Charlie's mother, Mrs. Silas Sloane, had quarreled seven years ago when it had allegedly been a bowlful of Mrs. Peter's porridge that had made Charlie violently ill for weeks, and neither had allowed the other to intervene with their own children ever since.

            Gilbert turned to his friend. "What's the word in school?" he asked Charlie. "Phillips as clueless as ever?"

            "As gone on Prissy Andrews as ever, that's certain," Charlie said. "On Friday, he just sat in back with her _the entire afternoon_. Not that I'm complaining…Tommy found the fittest team of racing crickets that day and they put Jimmy Glover's to shame…'course Jimmy blamed it on the three big juicy flies he'd just fed them."

            "There might be something in that," Gilbert said, snickering. Finally he asked the question that had been burning inside him for twenty minutes. "So what's this I hear about this orphan girl the Cuthberts got? What's-her-name, Anne…?"

            "Oh, Anne Shirley?" Charlie said automatically. "She's awful nice, and smart, and—"

            "Ho there, it's the slacker himself!" Jerry Bell cried, clapping Gilbert on the back. 

            Gilbert rolled his eyes. "I'm sure Phillips has been drilling you really hard," he said sarcastically, "I'll bet I missed a lot."

            "Certainly not," Julia said, tossing her sandy-brown hair as she joined them. "The amount of attention he pays to Prissy is perfectly ridiculous. Anne said that maybe they're planning something romantic, like an elopement, but Tillie said she heard them talking once and all that happened was that he complimented the way Prissy crossed her T's and she blushed."

            "What's Anne like?" Gilbert asked curiously. "I've heard stories…"

            "They're probably all true, I imagine," Julia said. "The first time I saw her, her hat was _overflowing_ with _pink and yellow_ _flowers_ in Sunday school." 

            She said this, like Aunt Edith, as if Gilbert were supposed to be horrified.

            "I'll never understand women," he thought to himself

            Undaunted, Julia continued on. "I've never met a stranger girl. She either can't stop talking or you have to practically clap your hands to wake her up. She's perfectly sweet, though, and thinks of the best games, if she is a bit odd."

            "She's not here today, is she?" Gilbert asked, looking around.

            "No," Julia said, happy that Gilbert for once was paying attention to her and thus warming to her subject, "she mentioned that Miss Cuthbert was taking her to visit a cousin in East Grafton this weekend." 

            "See you tomorrow, Gil," Charlie interjected, rushing off to join his parents.

            "Bye!"

            As soon as Charlie was a safe distance away, Julia leaned in closer. Alarmed, Gilbert backed away, crashing into Jerry's shoulder.

            "Clumsy as ever, Blythe," he commented. Gilbert didn't dignify this with a response. He was never clumsy…excepting, perhaps, when he was still half-asleep. He rubbed the tender spot on his head gingerly.

            "Just like Clifton Sloane," Jerry continued. "To hear him tell it, you'd think he was the hero of the White Sands baseball game, but really, he swung so early and missed so bad that he spun around entirely and _then_ the ball accidentally struck his bat…"

            Julia moved closer to Gilbert again. Baseball was of no consequence to her. "Em White heard from Carrie Sloane that Charlie is _dead gone_ on Anne Shirley," she whispered.

             "Really?" Gilbert said, mildly interested. 

            "It's a weight off of Em's mind," Julia continued, "it was her for years, you know—"

            No, Gilbert didn't know. "I really ought to pay more attention to these things," he reflected. He'd always thought Charlie had preferred Bessie Wright, if anyone.

            "—And she _can't stand him_, so she's awful glad it's Anne now. Oh, and Tillie told me that—"

            "Are you ready for hockey this season, Blythe?" Jerry broke in. His ingratiating tone grated on Gilbert's nerves.

            "Not particularly, Bell, since the temperature isn't even close to dipping below 32 degrees," he replied sarcastically. 

            Jerry looked at him rather blankly.

            He'd had enough of the two of them. "I'll see you in school tomorrow," Gilbert said quickly, seeing his parents down by the road and making his escape.

            "Bye, Gil!" Julia called after him. "I'm glad you're back!"

            John Blythe was chuckling as his son joined them. Gilbert glared at him. "They're—" he began.

            "Now, don't say anything uncharitable on Sunday especially," Cecilia interrupted hastily.

            Gilbert looked up at his mother, startled, and then began to laugh. His parents soon joined him.

            "So are _you_ glad to be back, Gil?" John asked him, putting an arm around his shoulder.

            "Immensely," he said, smiling. "I don't care what anyone says, Father…Avonlea is _never_ boring."

            As for exactly how boring it wasn't, well…Gilbert was to find _that_ out very soon.

________________________________________

**Citations: * ~ **_Anne of Green Gables,_ "The Bend in the Road" (p. 364).

            ** ~ _Anne of Green Gables,_ "A Tempest in the School Teapot" (p. 131).

**Author's Note**: As always, please review! I'm already at work on Chapter 2, by the way…but I'm also a v. busy college student, so I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to eke it out.


	2. An Unwelcome Delay

**Avonlea's Brightest Son**

**Author**: Laurie

**Author email**: laurie078@aol.com

**Spoilers**: AoGG

**Rating**: PG

**Summary**: After spending three years out west while his father recuperated his health, Gilbert Blythe's life had finally returned to normalcy. With a crack of the slate, however, the Cuthberts' adopted orphan Anne Shirley turned his complacent routine of school, chores and good-natured torment upside-down. Anne's influence, if antagonistic, launches the matter-of-fact Gilbert on a journey of discovery: of self, of Anne, and of the allure of things unseen.

**Author's Note**: This narrative is an attempt to trace the events of L.M. Montgomery's _Anne of Green Gables_ from a Gilbert-centric, although omniscient, perspective. Thus all the rules and events of canon apply. Naturally, L.M. Montgomery couldn't include _every_ detail of Anne's life; the new events that I will describe are also an attempt to fill in the blanks of what she left out. 

**Disclaimer**: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Lucy Maud Montgomery and her heirs, and various publishers, including but not limited to Scholastic Inc., and Bantam Books. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended. Only the few characters you do not recognize belong to me. I have taken the most liberties, out of necessity, with the Blythe family, and have striven to keep everyone else strictly in character as dictated by L.M. Montgomery. At times I will extract and build on passages from canon; all of these will be cited from the Scholastic Inc. Apple Paperbacks edition. 

**Review Responses: **Thank you all so much for your wonderful reviews! I'm glad to know that there are others out there as interested in adding depth to Gilbert's character as I am. I tried to include as many references/occurrences from canon as I could to integrate/ground it in the _Anne of Green Gables_ "reality"…let me know if you find any errors or sticking points.

*Someone Out There Cares – Thanks for the citation suggestion…I revised the last chapter with asterisks and will use them for subsequent chapters. It's definitely less distracting.

*Una Meredith – I hadn't thought of the John/Cecilia Meredith/Blythe parallel until you pointed it out! Wow. Maybe I've internalized L.M. Montgomery even more thoroughly, deeply and *subconsciously* than I thought. Once I hit on the name Cecilia nothing else sounded *right*. V. odd.

*Benrie – I'm sorry you thought the story was a bit "nothing"-ish so far; I did intend for Chapter 1 to be more background and less action. I want to establish Gilbert as a character in his own right, separate from his relationships with Anne. 

**Chapter Summary: **In which Gilbert doesn't go to school the next day. This shorter, interlude-y episode has missing Readers, broken fences and giggling girls, but alas, no Anne (yet). I was originally going to chronicle the slate incident in this chapter, but then I discovered the passage in the epigraph below, which indicates that my original chronology was missing a day that existed in AoGG. So this chapter is my version of that day.

**==================================================**

**Chapter 2: An Unwelcome Delay**

_            "'I got up yesterday spelling 'ebullition'. Josie Pye was head and, mind you, she peeped in her book.'[said Anne.]"… _

_            "'Those Pye girls are cheats all around,' said Diana indignantly. 'Gertie Pye actually went and put her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. Did you ever? I don't speak to her now.'" _

_                                    ~ _Anne of Green Gables, _"A Tempest in the School Teapot"_

[**Author's Note:** The premise behind this chapter is that although Gilbert "only came home _Saturday_ night" (italics mine), from the above references of Anne and Diana to "yesterday," he must not have been in school on Monday.]

**Late September 1876**

            Late that evening, Gilbert was frantically tearing up the bedroom he'd spent a good deal of the afternoon setting in order. "Mother!" he called. "Mother!"

            Finally he gave up and rushed out of the room. "Mother!" he called again. "Do you know where my Reader is? I thought I had it in my room but I can't find it!"

            "MOTHER!" he yelled, running through the hall. "MY READER, DO YOU—"

            Mid-yell, he came face to face with Cecilia herself as she rounded the stairway corner, an armful of folded clothing in hand.

            "Ahh!" she yelped, startled. The clothes plummeted to the floor.

            "—know where it is?" Gilbert finished lamely. He hurriedly bent over to retrieve the clothes.

            "And now your father's shirts are covered in dust as well," Cecilia said resignedly.

            "Sorry." Gilbert handed her the shirts he'd picked up in a decidedly _un_folded jumble. "I just wondered if you'd seen my Reader anywhere – you know, the book I had on the train?"

            "No, I don't think so…did you look in your bedroom?"

            Gilbert followed her back to his bedroom. "Yes, and I didn't—"

            "Well, no wonder," Cecilia said with some annoyance. "Look at this mess! I thought you were going to straighten—"

            "And I did," Gilbert broke in, "but it got a bit disorganized again when I started searching for the book."

            Presently John appeared in the doorframe. "What's all this ruckus?" he asked. "Isn't it past your bedtime?"

            "Yes, but I can't find my Reader," Gilbert said, lifting up the rug and peering underneath it.

            "What's the rush?"

            "Well, I'll need it for tomorrow, Father," he answered impatiently. 

            As Gilbert bent down to look under the bed, a dreadful notion suddenly consumed his thoughts. What if the book had fallen into the chamber pot? He widened his eyes in horror and lifted the cover. 

            "—West Grafton tomorrow," John was saying.

            Gilbert looked up with relief, the awful circumstance duly dispelled. "What?"

            "Aha!" Cecilia cried. "Udolpho!"

            His mother picked up the sleeping cat from under the bedside table, revealing a battered volume in the process. "Is _that_ the Reader you were looking for?" she asked, smiling. 

            Udolpho meowed groggily.

            Gilbert grabbed the book, brushing several orange cat hairs off the cover. "Wow, Udolpho got a lot bigger this summer," he said sheepishly. "I wonder what Aunt Edith fed her."

            "Actually, I think it was Mae who did the feeding."

            "Well, no wonder then," Gilbert said. He liked his elder cousin Mae exceedingly, much better, in fact, than Andrew, but she had a tendency to overdo things. Udolpho had been a scrawny kitten when she'd attached herself to Gilbert two years ago in the Alberta boardinghouse, and even after Gilbert smuggled her with him on the journey back to the Island, where he'd ensured she had food aplenty, she had always been a rather wiry cat. Not so anymore.

            "Udolpho," he said sternly, taking the lately fattened feline from his mother, "no more hiding my books. I know we have a lot to discuss, what with me being away all summer, but that will have to wait until I get home from school tomorrow." He grinned at his parents.

            "Gilbert," John said, "weren't you listening to a word I said?"

            "Errr…"

            "You remember, I assume, that Uncle George mentioned he secured another ox for us, from Mr. Johnson in West Grafton?"

            "Oh, right, yes…"

            "We-e-ell," John said, "the reason he did that is because one of ours _died_ during the summer."

            "Yes, I know, but it was really old, right? I mean, we expected it, didn't we?"

            "Well, yes, but the point is that we need _another_ ox for the harvest, Gil."

            "Oh."

            "Which is why you're coming with me tomorrow to West Grafton, so we can get her from Mr. Johnson and drive her back."

            Comprehension began to dawn on Gilbert. "But…but…can't you take Andrew, Father?" 

            "He has his own farm to run now—"

            "Well, how about Pacifique?" Gilbert asked in desperation. "I've missed three weeks of school already, I can't—"

            "There's no reason for me to pull Pacifique away from his duties with your uncle George when I have you to help me."

            "I'm _already_ behind in school, I—"      

            "This is one day, Gilbert," John said testily. "Your cousin Andrew never complained like this. And when I was your age, I used to _beg_ my father to take me on errands with him."

            "Besides, Gil, you've always made it up with flying colors before," Cecilia said soothingly, rather mixing her metaphors.

            Gilbert knew when he had lost. "All right," he said, with only a trace of sullenness in his voice. 

            "I'll wake you up tomorrow before dawn," said John, tousling his son's hair. "That way we'll get an early start and you'll have time to mend the fence when we get back."

            "Splendid," Gilbert replied, under his breath.

            "Did you see the state of it?" his father continued, unhearing. "No doubt it was that no-good cow of Andrew Bell's, running loose again…"

            "Good night, Gil," Cecilia said, exiting the room behind her husband. "Try to straighten up this room up before bed, eh? _Again_," she added after a beat, smiling.

            Gilbert managed a weak smile in return as he closed the door. 

            Sighing, he turned to his cat. "_You_ understand, don't you Udolpho?" he asked, picking her up and stroking between her ears. She purred in agreement. "I thought so."

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

            The next day passed with excruciating slowness, or so it seemed to Gilbert. The trip to and from West Grafton went smoothly enough, though he enjoyed it much less than he usually did an excursion with his father. He took pains to keep up his end of the conversation, however, lest John suspect he was still disappointed about missing school.

            It was getting late in the afternoon by the time they returned and Gilbert set out to mend the fence along the Newbridge road.

            "Stupid cow," he muttered to himself, surveying the broken boards. "I'll bet Andrew Bell's fences are fine, he probably just left the gate open as usual…"

            "Good afternoon, Mr. Bell," he said cheerily, suddenly spotting the man himself walking up the road. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

            "Couldn't have asked for a better," said Mr. Bell. He stopped at the roadside and surveyed the broken boards.  "My, that's some nasty split in your fence there, Gilbert. You think your dog chewed it up?"

            Gilbert coughed to cover up his incredulity. The Blythes' dog, Zip, was a small mutt that could no more bite through the substantial picket fence than Gilbert could himself. 

            "Um, well now, maybe," he responded rather shakily, trying with all his might not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the suggestion.

             "Well, you better keep an eye on him," Mr. Bell admonished. "Tell your father I said hello, there's a good boy." He tipped his hat and walked off.

            "Chewed up by our dog!" Gilbert snorted. "Maybe if Zip had teeth the size and shape of a cow's hooves!"

            Whether dog- or cow-induced, however, Gilbert still had to mend the breach in the fence before sunset, so he crouched down and began to hammer away.****

            Sometime later, a voice interrupted his pounding. "Gilbert Blythe, I _thought_ you were back." 

            He looked up to see Diana Barry standing above him on the road.

            "Oh, hello crowhead," he said easily.

            She glared at him.

            He put down his hammer. "My father and I went down to West Grafton today," he said. "For an ox."

            "Oh," said Diana, clearly neither interested nor comprehending.

            "That's why I wasn't in school," Gilbert added, by way of clarification.

            "Oh, of course," she nodded. "I'm on my way to the Post Office." She brandished a letter. "My parents wrote to Great-aunt Josephine _again _asking her to visit. I don't know why they're so keen on her coming. She's just awful fussy. But then again, I suppose I do know."

            "She's rich?" Gilbert guessed.

            "Awfully. You know, sometimes I wish we could _pick_ our relations rather than being stuck with them. But then again, I'm sure all your aunts and uncles are nice."

            "Oh, ho!" Gilbert said. "I mean, for the most part they are; Aunt Edith and Uncle George are great, and Aunt Emily, who I stayed with this summer, is a duck – but then," he shuddered, "there's Aunt Mary Maria."

            "Who's that?" asked Diana.

            "She's not even an aunt, really," Gilbert went on, "just Father's cousin. She's only in her thirties somewhere, I think – but you'd imagine she was sixty the way she carries on about her age when Father teases her."

            "Is she married?" 

            "No-oo, I suppose that's why then." Suddenly Gilbert realized he perhaps oughtn't to be talking about a member of the Blythe family this way to an outsider. Hastily he added, "Actually, she's not so bad, just a bit…pessimistic."

            "It's understandable in an old maid," Diana said. "Maybe that's why Aunt Josephine is so picky about everything. I hope_ I_ won't end up like that." She trembled at the thought.

            "I'm sure you won't," said Gilbert. He meant merely to be comforting, but then Diana met his eyes and blushed. 

            He looked away awkwardly and grabbed his hammer. "I should probably be getting back to this," he said. "I'll see you in school tomorrow, crowhead."

            She rushed off, affecting annoyance but still blushing. "Bye, Gil!"

            The incident probably wouldn't have left an impression on Gilbert if it hadn't subsequently been compounded by another ten times worse. 

            He heard the giggles before he saw their sources. "Gil Blythe, how nice to see you!" simpered Josie Pye, clambering down from the road, her sister Gertie not far behind. "We were just talking about you, you know." Josie rested her elbows on the fence posts and beamed up at him. 

            "Josie, Gertie," he nodded distractedly, rather nervous about the slight sway of the fence under Josie's weight. 

            "How _was_ your summer, Gilbert?" Gertie asked. "You must have had _such fun_, off in New Brunswick visiting."

            "It was nice, thanks," he answered cordially. "And yours?"

            "Oh, it was _deathly_ dull," Josie said. "The Sunday school picnic was a bit of fun, I suppose, and of course the boys had their baseball games…"

            "They were just _dreadful _without you, Gil," Gertie interjected.

            "Of course Jerry Bell bragged all the time like they weren't," Josie said, "but honestly it was _embarrassing_ to watch, the way those White Sands boys just _crushed_ us."

            "Speaking of Jerry, we just came from the Bells'," said Gertie. "Julia was telling us about the long, _personal_ conversation you two had on Sunday."

            "Oh…," he hesitated, trying to rack his brains for evidence of such an interview. Had he _ever_ had a "long, personal" conversation with Julia Bell, let alone yesterday? "I suppose I did talk to her for a bit after church," he recollected to himself, "but Jerry and Charlie were there too, weren't they?" He knit his brows in confusion.

            Josie and Gertie were observing his silence and facial expressions with ill-contained glee. "I knew she was lying," Josie said triumphantly.

            "She was so happy when that 'Take Notice' went up last spring, for all she pretended to be so mad," added Gertie. "I'll bet she put it there herself!"

            "I'm sure she didn't," Gilbert said placidly. "She didn't completely make it up, you know, yesterday I _was _talking with her and her brother about what's been going on in school lately."

            "Oh, well," Josie said, trying not to look disappointed. "School hasn't been so interesting either. And it's dreadfully easy! Why, I've been head in spelling so long that today I decided to be charitable and let Anne Shirley have a turn." 

            Gertie giggled. "And Anne put on such airs about being head. It's perfectly silly for a girl her age only in the fourth book."

            Gilbert shook his head. He was fairly certain they weren't being intentionally malicious – well, at least, not to him – but the lack of tact was rather astounding.

            "You know what _I_ call perfectly silly? How completely attached Anne and Diana Barry have become! She calls Diana 'her bosom friend,'" Josie giggled.

            At the mention of Diana Gertie became indignant. "Have you ever heard the like? Diana got all mad today, saying I put my milk in her 'spot' in the brook. You know I've had that spot by the rock for years!"

            Josie nodded. "She's just being spiteful, is all. Why, Diana's been bitter ever since she heard that we were to have music lessons and _her_ father can't afford them."

            "That's rather uncharitable, I'm sure Diana's not—" Gilbert began.

            "So how's the fence coming, Gilbert?" Gertie asked, not listening. "I hope you haven't been working _too_ hard." 

            "Nope, I haven't," Gilbert responded quickly, sensing an out. "But I really should, since Father wants this done before nightfall. If you'll excuse me…?"

            "Oh, of course," Josie said. "We'll see you tomorrow, Gil." 

            She smiled sweetly as she and Gertie linked arms and walked off. "Now _we'll_ have something to tell _Julia_," he could hear one of them saying.

            Gilbert shook his head in amazement. First Julia, then Diana, and now Josie and Gertie? What had happened to the Avonlea girls over the summer? They certainly hadn't seemed this…well, silly, before he left last spring. He hadn't even been to school yet and was _already_ rather bothered and confounded (as well as flattered, though he didn't admit such to himself) by the antics of his female classmates.

            Finally free from interruption, Gilbert finished mending the fence before it grew too dusky to see the nails. Before he made his way inside, however, he threw one last dark look in the general direction of Mr. Andrew Bell's farmhouse. "Our _dog_ indeed," he muttered.

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**Author's Note**: Don't worry, Anne will _definitely_ make an entrance in the next chapter. And what an entrance it will be…(!) As always, reviews are welcome and much appreciated!


	3. Enter Anne Shirley with a vengeance

**Avonlea's Brightest Son**

**Author**: Laurie

**Author email**:

**Spoilers**: AoGG

**Rating**: PG

**Summary**: After spending three years out west while his father recuperated his health, Gilbert Blythe's life had finally returned to normalcy. With a crack of the slate, however, the Cuthberts' adopted orphan Anne Shirley turned his complacent routine of school, chores and good-natured torment upside-down. Anne's influence, if antagonistic, launches the matter-of-fact Gilbert on a journey of discovery: of self, of Anne, and of the allure of things unseen.

**Author's Note**: This narrative is an attempt to trace the events of L.M. Montgomery's _Anne of Green Gables_ from a Gilbert-centric, although omniscient, perspective. Thus all the rules and events of canon apply. Naturally, L.M. Montgomery couldn't include _every_ detail of Anne's life; the new events that I will describe are also an attempt to fill in the blanks of what she left out.

**Disclaimer**: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Lucy Maud Montgomery and her heirs, and various publishers, including but not limited to Scholastic Inc., and Bantam Books. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended. Only the few characters you do not recognize belong to me. I have taken the most liberties, out of necessity, with the Blythe family, and have striven to keep everyone else strictly in character as dictated by L.M. Montgomery. At times I will extract and build on passages from canon; all of these will be cited from the Scholastic Inc. Apple Paperbacks edition.

**Review Responses: **Thanks so much for all your reviews! I devoutly apologize for taking so long to finish chapter 3 – 'twas a combination of summer doldrums/lack of inspiration and the fact that this chapter, in that the events it describes are also set down in detail in canon, was a difficult one. It is to be hoped (but not promised, alas) that in the future I can update without so lengthy of a delay.

**Chapter Summary: **In which Gilbert has his first, shall we say, _contact_ with Anne.

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**Chapter 3: Enter Anne Shirley – with a vengeance**

_"Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable one." _

Anne of Green Gables, _"A Tempest in the School Teapot"_

**Late September, 1876**

Gilbert awoke of his own accord the next morning, his mother having forced him into bed at an embarrassingly early hour. He threw on his clothes, dug out a pair of suspenders from his now-organized drawer, and clambered down the stairs – only to realize that it was not yet dawn and neither of his parents had awakened yet.

Feeling rather foolish, he lit a candle and wandered into the sitting room, to the shelf where he normally kept his books and school things. He grabbed his tattered Reader and slate, proceeding to thoroughly polish the latter with the sleeve of his shirt. He'd moved on to sharpening his slate pencils when he heard clattering noises that indicated his father was awake.

"Who's there?" John Blythe called, seeing the candlelight. He made his way into the sitting room, then stopped abruptly. "Oh, Gil! You scared me half to death!"

Distracted, Gilbert shrugged. "I'm sorry," he said, still diligently sharpening.

John looked down at his son and smiled wryly. "You know, I was never nearly _that_ excited to go to school," he commented. "I was lucky if I could even find one of those things, let alone five perfectly sharpened ones."

Gilbert flushed, embarrassed. "I was just bored," he said lamely, dropping the pencil.

"Well, if you're truly bored, you could take some initiative and go do the early milking," John said. "Of course, that wouldn't happen to be one of your assigned chores in the first place, would it?"

He flushed more deeply. "Yes, yes, I'm sorry, I'd forgotten," he muttered, carefully setting down the pencils.

John shook his head. "You forget a simple chore like that, but I'd wager you still recall some silly little fact like…like…like the capital of some no-count country…say, Mexico, for example."

Gilbert frowned. "It's Mexico City, Father," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Well, well, see, then?" John replied, unperturbed. "Now remember, Rosie's still with her calf, don't—"

"I _know_, I'm going."

By the time Gilbert returned with a full milk pail, his mother was rattling around the kitchen and his father had sat down to breakfast.

"Hurry, your porridge is getting cold," Cecilia said, glancing at him. "Oh, Gil, your hair!"

"What's wrong with my hair?" he asked defensively, taking a seat across from his father.

Cecilia licked her fingers and tried to pat it down. Gilbert jerked away. The process was repeated several times before Cecilia finally left him alone in despair.

"It just _doesn't_ lie flat, Mother, you know that," Gilbert said, digging in to his porridge.

About halfway through the large bowlful, his appetite faltered slightly. Porridge was too…wholesome to eat in such large quantities, he reflected. Now, molasses cookies, on the other hand…

"You know, Charlie Sloane almost died from eating porridge when he was four," Gilbert remarked, breaking the silence.

Cecilia rolled her eyes at the mention of the much-discussed incident. "I hadn't heard," she said sarcastically. "But what do you mean? Are you implying that you don't like porridge?"

"No, no, of course not," Gilbert said quickly. "I'm just saying that if I fall down stone dead in the next few days, you'll know why." He grinned.

"I'll risk it," his mother said. "Besides, you are not four, you have the Blythe, not the Sloane, constitution, and I am most certainly not Mrs. Peter Sloane."

"Thank goodness for that," John said. He kissed Cecilia on the cheek as he arose. "George and I are going over this morning to look at some new contraption Andrew's got – says it'll revolutionize potato harvesting."

"And it'll be a dramatic revolution indeed," Gilbert said under his breath, taking his bowl to the sink. "Well…maybe in Ireland," he amended, reflecting.

"What's that, Gil?" his mother asked, handing him his lunch pail.

"Nothing…. I'm off, Mother, Father," he said as he rushed to the sitting room to scoop up his books and slate. "Wish me luck on my first day!"

"You've always done fine, Gil, you don't need luck," said Cecilia. She quickly swooped in and kissed him on the forehead. He flinched but didn't wipe it off.

He was almost out the door, when… "Gil, what's that on your sleeve?" his eagle-eyed mother called, spying the slate-induced smudge.

"Errr…nothing, prob'ly just a shadow. Bye!" He hustled down the steps before his mother could conduct an inspection.

Having thus escaped, Gilbert tore across the yard, too impatient to waste precious seconds walking properly down the path to the gate. Clutching books, slate, and lunch pail in one hand, he vaulted over the newly-mended fence with the other, landing neatly on his feet.

Clusters of schoolchildren were trudging along the road toward the Avonlea school, some chatting animatedly to each other but none looking quite as excited as Gilbert felt _he_ must. Realizing his near-jog and huge smile were attracting stares, he thought perhaps that it wasn't quite wise to overtly exhibit such school-going eagerness. Therefore, by the time he approached the bridge over Barry's pond, Gilbert had considerably slowed his steps, his cavalier air punctuated by a nonchalant whistle.

It was a good thing, too, for – _whoosh!_ And then – _splat!_ A gob of mud splattered on the road just in front of him, missing his shoulder by inches.

Gilbert halted abruptly and looked around. "Wha?"

"Oy, Blythe!"

Gilbert let out a sudden whoop of recognition and rushed to the bridge railing. Fred Wright waved up at him from the banks of Barry's pond, where he was tying a dory to the few rotting posts and boards that served as a makeshift dock. Fred and his younger brother Ned nearly always rowed to school, except in the winter, when they skated, since both the road and wooded routes from their house were much less direct.

Suddenly another mudball hurtled toward him. Gilbert ducked just in time, then made a triumphant face down at mischievous, ten-year-old Ned, who was stamping his foot in disappointment at the second near miss. "I'll get you later, Blythe!" he called, scurrying up the muddy bank after Fred.

"Well, you'll try, at least," Gilbert smirked, as Fred and Ned joined him on the road. Fred was just a bit younger than Gilbert, and a good chum of his; he was friendly with Ned, too, but more in a teasing, competitive, trying to one-up each other fashion. Imp reached out to imp in each boy's spirit, resulting in myriad mud hurlings and foot-trippings. Gilbert presently stuck out his leg and attempted the latter, in retribution for the former, but Ned hopped over the impeding limb disdainfully.

"Like I'd fall for that," Ned scoffed. Unluckily, however, his left foot chose that very moment to step on his untied right shoelace, resulting in a quite ungraceful stumble. Gilbert and Fred guffawed.

"I don't even need to make an effort if you do that of your own accord," Gilbert snickered.

Ned glared. "Aw, shut up."

"Bet New Brunswick was great fun," said Fred jealously, turning to Gilbert. His travels were much the envy of the Avonlea schoolboys especially, most of whom had never ventured farther than Charlottetown, if that.

Fred glanced down at his heavy stack of books and groaned. "Phillips's been just _loading_ us up with work. S'not so bad for the girls as for us boys though. Doesn't seem to understand that we have lots to take up our evenings _besides_ geometric equations, with harvest time setting in and all."

Gilbert nodded sympathetically

"'Course, it's mainly 'cause we get next to nothing done _in_ school," Ned piped up.

"True enough. Oh well, doesn't matter much anyway, does it? Ol' Teddy can jaw at me all he wants – s'not like I'm going to need to know when the Magna Carta was signed to make a living in this world." Fred shrugged.

"Why, 1215," Gilbert said without thinking.

Fred and Ned both gave him odd looks, but he was saved from formulating a blushing response by the sudden, carrying sound of loud girlish chatter off the road a bit ahead.

"—little boys and girls of nine or ten," someone was saying in a strangely sweet, clear voice. "I got up yesterday spelling 'ebullition.'"

E-b-u-double l-i-t-i-o-n. Ha! Gilbert thought happily.

"Josie Pye was head and, mind you, she peeped in her book," the voice continued. "Mr. Phillips didn't see her – he was looking at Prissy Andrews –" (Ned snickered) "but I did. I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she got red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all."

Gilbert let out a sudden laugh.

In response to Fred's questioning look he explained, "Oh, it's just…Josie told me yesterday afternoon that—"

"Oh, she's always looking in her book and then acting like everyone else is so stupid for misspelling 'candelabra,' or some such thing" said Ned. "I was glad Anne put her in her place."

"Anne?" Gilbert's curiosity was piqued, but a taunt from Fred to his brother turned quickly into a heated discussion – some unsettled point or another from yesterday's lunchtime ball game – so Gilbert let his attention focus elsewhere.

He glanced up the road again as Diana Barry appeared from a rather winding, narrow path and mechanically climbed the fence to the main road, still talking over her shoulder.

"—put her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday," Diana was saying indignantly. "Did you ever? I don't speak to her now."

Gilbert was waiting in some anticipation for a look at the second figure, who he now realized must be Anne Shirley, the orphan at Green Gables whose exploits were at the tip of everyone's tongues. What did this personage, he wondered, this orphan girl who was supposed to be a boy, who stirred up the Avonlea gossip mill for four months and counting, who put both Josie and Mrs. Lynde in their places, and who spoke in such a clear, blithe voice – what did such a personage look like?

Presently she – Anne – materialized from amongst the birch trees, nymph-like – only nymphs hadn't aprons starched quite so crisply or lunch pails twirling energetically in their hands. She was rather skinny and small, and Gilbert could discern, even amidst the birches' shade, that her braids were quite astonishingly red.

"As well you shouldn't," Anne was responding to Diana, nimbly scaling the fence, lunch pail and all. "I _saw_ her wink behind your back at Bessie, for all her wide-eyed, innocent protestations that she's _always_ put her – Oh, Diana!"

Anne had now turned toward him (and the still-debating Fred and Ned), and taken a step from the shade into the sunlit road, so Gilbert first fully saw her as…as _something_ was enacting a transformation over her countenance.

Her face was pale, dappled with numerous pinpricks of a darker hue (it was only later that Gilbert thought to term them freckles), rather pointed at cheekbones and chin but nicely shaped at nose and ears. Her hair was red, yes, but Gilbert had seen red hair before and _this_ was a different phenomenon altogether – sun and shadow seemed to battle and frolic in its ripples – it was a _living_ red. It was Anne's eyes, though, that formed the most distinct impression: large grey eyes that shone, seeming to see through him, to gaze raptly beyond him as she clasped her hands beneath her chin.

"What is it?" asked Diana.

"Look at the sun in the Lake of Shining Waters!" she gasped, pointing across the road and behind him.

Gilbert craned his neck automatically in that direction.

Wait, the _what_? He cast his gaze around until it fell on Barry's pond, where he spotted the reflection of a bright, perfect orb glittering in the rippled waters.

"Oh, even the _Pyes_ cease to sting in the face of such beauty," Anne breathed.

Gilbert stared out at the water a bit longer. It was rather pretty, he supposed, but hardly the cause for such a reaction.

Evidently Diana agreed with him. "All the same," she said to Anne, "I shan't speak to Gertie today, unless she puts her bottle back in its proper place, of course."

Then Diana spotted Gilbert looking at them. She cast down her eyes and, irritatingly, began to blush, one finger twirling a long dark curl.

Gilbert turned quickly back to the Wrights, who were both looking at him expectantly.

"Well, Gil?"

He raised his eyebrows.

"What do you think?" Ned prodded.

Apparently they were calling on him to assess their ball game disagreement.

"Well…," Gilbert began, unsure how to pretend he'd been listening.

Suddenly he grinned. "I suppose I'd have to say that I think you're _both_ Wright."

Fred groaned loudly, and Ned tore up the spruce hill and into the schoolyard after a laughing Gilbert to…er…_pun_ish him for the transgression.

After one loop around the school building to the outhouse and back to the entrance to the schoolyard, Gilbert allowed Ned to catch him and clip him on the shoulder. After all, it was a terrible pun, he reflected. I rather deserve it.

Satisfied he'd wreaked his vengeance, Ned began to saunter back toward the school, where several boys were playing a spirited game of catch. But not before: "Not so _Blythe_ now, are we?" He then raced off without a backward glance, assuming Gilbert would tear after him.

Under normal circumstances, he would have, but just then Gilbert was looking again at Anne Shirley and Diana, who'd been joined on the road by Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis. The latter three were chattering away, but Anne kept glancing back at Barry's pond, or the Lake of Shining…whatsit? He shook his head slightly

Anne looked completely different from any girl he'd ever seen, Gilbert decided. But it wasn't necessarily her hair…certainly he'd known redheads before, even in Avonlea. What was it then? There was _something_ singular about her. Gilbert was too broad-minded and rational to, Aunt Edith-like, cast the difference up to Anne's Nova Scotian ancestry. And it wasn't just that she was an orphan, was it? No, no, that was just as silly an explanation.

It was Anne's eyes that were different, he finally determined. They were larger than other girls'. Yes, that was it, he thought, happy to have hit upon a practical explanation.

Or perhaps – the thought came to him unbidden – Anne's eyes just seemed bigger because somethingdistinctive gleamed in them, shone through them...

Before he had time to fully grasp this notion, however –

"Blythe – catch this!" Sam Boulter shouted suddenly. The ball was arcing high in the air, careening toward him at a rapid pace…no, it was soaring way off to the left. His reverie forgotten, Gilbert began to sprint toward the path of the ball.

"Nice toss, Boulter," Jerry Bell snickered.

"No fair, Sam, that's an impossible throw!" Charlie Sloane yelled.

"Isn't!"

"Is!"

"Oh, well, he's going for it, isn't he?" Sam shrugged, grinning at Jerry.

"But he wasn't playing before!" Charlie persisted.

"You knew he wasn't paying attention," added Ned.

A chorus of "Yeah's" followed, along with a few others to the tune of "Too late now"; Gilbert himself ignored both sides of the debate, concentrating only on the flight of the ball, legs moving as fast as they could.

Catch among the Avonlea boys was a game of honor. Missing the ball when one's name was called marked one as an object of abject scorn forever, or, at least, for the next few hours. Possible exploitations of the system, in the form of, as Charlie complained, "impossible throws," were controlled by rendering "going after the ball" a sort of binding contract. By doing so, the "catch-er" implicitly acknowledged the throw "possible" to catch. (Conversely, not going for a catch that a majority deemed actually "possible" tagged one as a sissy.)

Presently, this catch was looking less and less "possible," but it _was_ too late to turn back now. The ball was still off to Gilbert's left, and dropping closer and closer to the ground. He knew he wasn't fast enough…there was only one chance…he dove…

"Ohhhhh!" the boys exclaimed, starting to rush over.

"Blythe's tripped and fell flat on his face!" Rob Wright called gleefully. Jerry joined him in derisive laughter.

For a split second it did indeed appear that Gilbert had fallen face-first on the ground, but then they all noticed that one arm had remained above the tall grass – one arm that was cradling the ball.

"He's caught it!" Ned cried.

"No!"

"Incredible!"

"He couldn't have caught that," Jerry said, less than assuredly. "He probably just picked it up off the ground."

"Are you blind, Bell?" said Clifton Sloane scornfully. "The ball never went below the grass!"

By then, they'd all gathered around Gilbert, who arose a bit more slowly than necessary so as to milk the moment for all it was worth.

"Piece of cake," he said as he finally stood up, flipping the ball to a scowling Jerry.

"Nice one, Blythe!" Fred said, clapping him on the back.

Gilbert brushed the grass off his trousers. "You might want to put a bit more on your toss next time, Boulter," he said condescendingly, miming a throwing motion. "See, when you do it like this, it's just going to loft…"

"Wow, Gil, that was amazing!" exclaimed Tommy Sloane. Tommy was Clifton's younger brother, who, along with several of his fellow eight-year-olds, thought _everything_ Gilbert did amazing.

He smiled graciously at Tommy, noting at the same time that Susan Gillis and her friends, seated behind Tommy on a rock, had been watching the catch as well, and also deemed him rather "amazing." She smiled at him, then whispered something in Mary Alice Bell's ear. Both giggled.

Just then the unmistakable clanging of a bell sounded through the schoolyard, sending all the students clambering toward the door.

My, but it was nice to be back at school! Gilbert thought as he made his way past decades of scrawled "Take Notices" on the porch wall. The successful catch had reestablished his proper place among the boys; that, along with Tommy's adulation and Susan's smile, worked quite nicely to remove the sting of missing the first few weeks.

Gilbert yawned and looked up from his book. His new vantage point of the schoolroom was much more interesting than the Canadian history Mr. Phillips had set them to read, a passage Gilbert felt sure he'd memorized before.

He caught Moody Spurgeon McPherson's eye at his old desk off to the right. Moody Spurgeon had been shooting him apologetic looks all morning, having in his absence taken over his former seat next to Charlie Sloane. Gilbert waved him off yet again. He'd have rather had a seatmate, to be sure, but he didn't much mind his new location. Situated as it was next to several of his female schoolmates, it offered several fresh opportunities for mischief.

One of which, in fact, was presenting itself right now.

"Em," Ruby Gillis, who sat just in front of him, whispered to her seatmate, "I know this sum is _supposed_ to come out to 4,080, but it just _won't_."

Em White turned nervously to look at Mr. Phillips, who was hearing Prissy's Latin.

"Shhhh!" Then she shrugged. "I don't know…I already gave mine in."

"Oh, bother," Ruby groaned, tossing her braid over her shoulder in exasperation.

The long golden braid dangled temptingly in front of Gilbert. He slowly reached out to pull it, but then decided against that course of action. No, no, that lacks subtlety, he thought.

In a flash he remembered the pin he'd discovered in his pocket earlier that morning, likely dropped there accidentally when his mother had been mending some rent or tear. He fished it out and observed it: rather long and heavy – perfect.

He shifted his book up on his desk, bent over it as if focusing intensely on the contents, and made like to rest his hands on the top of the pages; really, they began to occupy themselves with subtly sticking the pin through Ruby's braid.

This task required all of Gilbert's concentration and skill, for he had to be gentle enough so that Ruby wouldn't feel any tugs, but firm enough so the pin would stay in the back of her seat. There!

"I suppose this is close enough," Ruby whispered to Em. She picked up her slate and started to rise…

"Oh!" she shrieked, abruptly jerked back to her seat.

It held! Gilbert thought gleefully, snatching the pin swiftly away just as the disturbance prompted everyone to look up with interest.

Prissy's recitation thus interrupted, Mr. Phillips turned to glare at the offending Ruby, who had grabbed her braid confusedly. Pretending to absorb himself in his history until the hubbub subsided, Gilbert felt suddenly aware of Anne Shirley's eyes regarding him from across the aisle.

He turned to look at her. From the expression on her face, he could tell that she'd observed all that had passed, but her grey eyes were dark and unreadable.

She doesn't look like a tattletale, he decided quickly. He grinned and winked at her.

Anne raised her eyebrows slightly, but otherwise her face was expressionless as she turned to whisper something to Diana.

Well, she wouldn't tell, at least, Gilbert determined. He was slightly unsettled by the encounter, though a bit unsure why. Did Anne think him mean for the little prank? Ruby _had _started to cry…but she was always crying over something or another, and it was just because Phillips had glared at her, not because of him…

Confound it, he thought, it was all in fun! Why should I care what she thinks, anyhow? Besides, she hadn't said anything, or even looked at him reproachfully. His thoughts were growing irrational, was all…for some reason, Anne seemed to have that effect on him.

_"But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen." _Anne of Green Gables, "A Tempest in the School Teapot"

Thus far Gilbert's first day at school had been an unadulterated success. He'd jumped to head in all his recitations, lined his pocket with five large chews of spruce gum at lunch, and been welcomed back enthusiastically by nearly all his classmates.

It's nice to have one's presence appreciated, Gilbert thought later that day, having finished the assigned arithmetic set in a flash. At lunch, Alice Andrews had given him a full quarter of one of her mother's much sought after lemon tarts; Tommy Sloane had entrusted him with his "third best" cricket (who Gilbert had secretly but promptly freed on the other side of the brook); and Tillie Boulter had let him borrow her lucky pebble, saying that it had already gotten her a new lace handkerchief and good marks on her sums this week, and "it didn't do to be too greedy all at one time." Everyone had clamored for stories of New Brunswick. _And_ Susan Gillis had listened to them and seemed interested!

Amidst all this, Gilbert had also found time to begin a few new campaigns of relentless teasing. Supplementary to his more elaborate pranks, Gilbert's most common method of torment was to taunt his female classmates by calling "names." Diana Barry was "Crow;" Julia Bell "Freckles," Carrie Sloane "Mouse," since she was so small; Sophia Sloane "Spider," due to her seemingly never-ending arms and legs; Josie and Gertie he called, in a play on their surname, after different varieties of pie: some days they were apple and cherry, others shepherd's and lemon meringue. And that was only a sampling.

Relatively simple and always innocuous, within his targets these "names" provoked an external indignation which served to mask their inner satisfaction at being singled out. Earlier that afternoon, for example, Gilbert had hit on "Goldilocks" as a new appellation for Ruby Gillis, and made a great show of asking her at lunch if her milk was too hot, too cold, or just right. She'd rolled her eyes and tossed those gold locks in mock outrage, of course, but he could tell she was secretly pleased.

This was how the Avonlea brand of girl that Gilbert knew and understood always reacted, at least. But Anne Shirley, as Gilbert had already observed, was not of this typical brand.

Mr. Phillips was, again, standing over Prissy Andrews at the back seats, attempting to clarify an algebra problem. Heavens, Gilbert thought, listening to Phillips drone on, even I can see now that x equals 12 and ¾, and I haven't had a single bit of algebra.

He leaned back in his seat and stretched, catching Susan Gillis's eye in the process. She giggled and turned to look at Mary Alice, who also began to giggle. He turned again, this time flashing her a smile. Then Mary Alice whispered something and Susan blushed, giggling still more.

Gilbert turned back quickly to face the front. Goodness, did that girl do nothing but giggle? He couldn't for the life of him see what was so funny.

"Oh, that's cruel to the poor crickets!" Ella May McPherson was whispering shrilly. Gilbert hid a smile. Tommy Sloane had harnessed his team of racing crickets (presumably his first and second best) to strings, and was driving them up and down the aisle.

"Shhhh!" Jimmy Glover said. "It doesn't hurt them none, and 'sides, I want to see how fast they'll go!"

"Me too!"

"I'll bet it takes ten seconds to get to that second desk."

"Ten? More like 25!"

"_Twenty-five_? I'll show you!" Tommy cried.

"Oh, _boys_." Ella May shook her head in dismay.

A quick glance around him confirmed for Gilbert that everyone else was engaged in similar nonsense. Rob Wright had drawn a rather grotesque-looking picture of Gertie on his slate and she was begging him in vain to show it to her; Fred and Sam Sloane had smuggled in some green apples and were merrily munching away; nearly everyone else was talking in low voices or passing notes up and down the rows.

Everyone, that is, except Anne Shirley. Beside her, Diana was busily scribbling on her slate and passing it back and forth with Jane Andrews, but Anne seemed to have no part in it. Chin propped in her hands, she was staring raptly at…nothing in particular, at least as far as Gilbert could tell. He wondered what she was thinking of.

Idly Gilbert decided to get her attention. He slid towards her in his seat and winked at her again.

She didn't notice. He winked yet again. Then he shifted over a bit more and winked a third time, as obtrusively as he could.

"Is something matter with your eye, Gilbert?" Ruby asked, regarding him curiously.

"Oh," Gilbert faltered, "I…er…" (he looked around rapidly) "It's the crickets," he finally said, shuddering. "They make me nervous, with those big bulging eyes. I get all jittery." He began to blink and twitch exaggeratedly.

Ruby giggled and turned back around.

Gilbert glanced at Anne again and frowned. She was still staring off with that same dreamy expression.

He made a face at her. Nothing.

He tried a more horrible face. Still nothing, at least from Anne; Arty Gillis, seated across the room, pulled a grotesque, eye-popper of a face in response, apparently under the impression that Gilbert's was intended for him.

Gilbert was growing irritated. Why wouldn't Anne look at him? He'd never had to go to such great lengths to attract a girl's attention and met with failure.

He leaned over into the aisle and smiled winningly.

And was again completely ignored.

All right, then. Now was time for more drastic measures. He ripped the corner off a bit of paper in his desk, crumpled it into a ball, and pelted it at Anne.

The paper projectile struck her in shoulder, but bounced harmlessly, and unnoticed, onto the floor.

This was unheard of. What could be so interesting that even a thrown wad of paper wouldn't shock her out of her reverie? Perhaps she was ignoring him _on purpose_. But why? Gilbert had never been so shunned by a girl in his life. She _should_ look at him, that Anne Shirley, whose eyes shone with such a beckoning light…

Finally he couldn't take it anymore. He was done with these passive overtures. Hang subtlety, he thought. Anne Shirley _would_ look at him if he had anything to say about it.

He leaned across the aisle, grabbed the end of one of her thick red braids, and held it up, hissing, "Carrots! Carrots!"

_Then_ Anne looked at him with a vengeance!

Gilbert, taken aback by the fire in her eyes (had he thought them grey? They weren't grey, but green, an angry, brilliant, scorching green), hastily dropped the braid and slid back into his seat.

Anne jumped to her feet, green eyes blazing and sparkling with angry tears. "You mean, hateful boy!" she cried furiously. "How dare you!"

Gilbert's own hazel eyes widened with amazement. Why, what have I done? he wondered in dismay.

And then, with a look of more heightened fury than he could have possibly imagined, she grabbed her slate from her desk. Before the stunned Gilbert could so much as move a muscle – thwack! Anne had smacked it down on his head forcefully enough to crack the slate cleanly in half.

Owwwww! was Gilbert's first coherent thought. His skull was nearly exploding with pain, made all the more acute by the still unhealed bump from the train and his bed.

"Ohhh!" everyone gasped, horror-struck but reveling in the scene. Ruby began to cry hysterically, and Tommy Sloane, gawking, dropped his cricket-reins.

Anne herself appeared a bit shaken; the pieces of slate slipped out of her hands and clattered to the floor, forgotten.

Mr. Phillips strode quickly down the aisle and grabbed Anne by the shoulder.

"Anne Shirley, what does this mean?"

Anne looked up at him, eyes still green and blazing. She narrowed them slightly but kept her mouth resolutely shut.

I was right earlier, Gilbert thought wryly. She's no tattletale.

Both the pain and shock having ebbed slightly, Gilbert stood up. "It was my fault, Mr. Phillips," he said, trying to shoot an apologetic look past him at Anne. "I teased her."

Anne, who was wiping the angry tears from her face, stood up a bit more straightly and ignored him. So did Mr. Phillips.

"I am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a vindictive spirit," Mr. Phillips said somberly.

Gilbert rolled his eyes. And if you'd been teaching _all_ the students like you're paid to do, it never would have happened, he thought sardonically.

"Anne, go and stand on the platform in front of the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon."

Anne's face set in a cold, angry expression, but her lip quivered slightly and her skin paled. All of a sudden Gilbert felt absolutely awful. Anne seemed perfectly nice, she'd done nothing to him, and she was an _orphan_, for pity's sake, and he'd gone and…and well, somehow, he'd apparently made her mad, and now only she was being punished…

"But sir," Gilbert tried again, "I should be penalized too, I…"

Mr. Phillips ignored him again. He stalked past Gilbert as Anne made her way mechanically to the platform.

Gilbert sat down in exasperation. He was admitting a crime, actually _asking_ for punishment and not getting it. What could be more unreasonable?

Meanwhile, Mr. Phillips was scrawling something on the chalkboard above Anne's head.

"Ann Shirley has a very bad temper," he read aloud for the benefit of the youngest students. "Ann Shirley must learn to control her temper."

Anne stood resentfully at the platform, still as a statue. Gilbert tried and tried to catch her eye but was again unsuccessful, although he was fairly certain that this time her avoidance was on purpose.

He stared at her admiringly. Any other girl, he was sure, would have broken down and cried in such a situation, but Anne didn't even hang her head. Her eyes, resolutely fixed straight ahead, were full of stony green wrath, and her cheeks were aflame with controlled fury. He hadn't thought, before, whether he considered her pretty or not (looking back, he found this odd; such a judgment was something he normally made at first glance), but just then, regarding her on the platform, he reckoned her completely stunning.

Mr. Phillips had apparently been shocked by Anne's act of fury into teaching properly again. When he'd called the primer class forward, Gilbert's classmates began to discuss the incident in muted, shocked whispers.

"Did you see…"

"…_broken_…"

"I can't believe…"

"…temper goes with her hair…"

"Poor Gilbert…"

The last comment came from Josie, who was simpering at him sympathetically from across the room. She then turned to smirk at Anne, who ignored her.

Gilbert looked past Josie at Charlie Sloane, who was also trying to catch Anne's eye, nodding indignantly. Charlie noticed Gilbert looking at him and frowned.

The bump on his head was still throbbing somewhat, and he automatically raised his hand up to pat it. Behind him, Jerry Bell and Sam Boulter began to snicker.

Just perfect, he thought. I've somehow made Anne furious, and then gotten her disgraced by Phillips in front of everyone, _and _I'm a laughingstock, too, for getting comeuppance from a girl.

This day had started so promisingly. Now it seemed, slate-like, to be going to pieces.

Just then Gilbert caught a shift in Anne's statue-esque demeanor out of the corner of his eye. Checking to make sure that Mr. Phillips' head was still bent over little Arty Sloane's shoulder, Anne snatched up some chalk and quickly appended "e's" to the "Ann's" above her on the chalkboard.

Gilbert looked around. Only Diana, who'd been intermittently shooting Anne her most sympathetic looks, seemed to have noticed this rectification of Mr. Phillip's spelling error.

Diana leaned across the aisle toward him. "Anne says that the "e" makes her name look much more distinguished," she explained.

The aptness of this struck Gilbert. Why, it does, he thought, looking again at the chalkboard. How very strange.

"Diana," he whispered plaintively, "what…what did I _do_? I don't understand. I…I mean, I tease you and call you crow all the time and you don't mind…do you? At least, you don't break slates over my head."

Diana almost smiled, but then stopped upon again glimpsing her suffering friend on the platform. "Anne's a bit sensitive about her hair."

"A_ bit _sensitive?" Gilbert looked down at the broken slate on the floor.

"Well, a lot then."

"But why? I didn't mean carrots as a…a derogatory vegetable or anything, I just…"

Gilbert quickly shut his mouth as Mr. Phillips looked up from the recitation to silence the students' intensifying whispers.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur for Gilbert, who was trying to formulate a compelling apology to Anne in his head.

Finally Mr. Phillips dismissed them. The incident was still on everyone's lips, only aloud now rather than at a whisper.

"Did you see her face…?"

"Most awful red – made her seem _all_ red."

"I didn't hear…what did Gilbert _say_ that was so dreadful?"

"Nothing so dreadful at all…all's he called her was 'Carrots.'"

"Katie's going to be awful mad she missed school today, just wait till I tell her."

A crowd began to gather around Gilbert.

"Oh, Blythe, the look on your face!" Rob Wright laughed.

The Pye girls sidled up to him. "Gilbert, are you all right?" asked Josie.

"Yes, that looked _so_ painful," Gertie added.

He paid them no mind and made a beeline for the porch. Anne was marching down to her desk to collect her things. He'd wait for her by the door to set things to rights.

Just then Anne stepped down into the porch, arms full of books but not, he noted, the broken slate.

Gilbert stepped toward her eagerly. "I'm awful sorry I made fun of your hair, Anne," he said, truly repentant. "Honest I am." She didn't seem very receptive to his plea. "Don't be mad for keeps, now," he added, almost desperately.

It was as if Anne hadn't heard a word he'd said, or like she hadn't seen him at all. Head held high, she swept disdainfully by, marched down the steps, and joined a gaping Diana in the schoolyard.

Gilbert was gaping himself. He'd thought for sure that once he'd apologized, explained he'd had no malicious intent, all would be well. None of the girls had ever stayed mad or ignored him like this before.

Jerry came up behind him and clapped him on the back. "Now that was a snub if I ever saw one," he said, snickering.

"Aw, shut your trap," Gilbert retorted, finally snapping. He stalked back into the classroom.

"Mr. Phillips," he began, walking straight up to his teacher. "I think that you treated Anne unfairly. It was _my_—"

"Are you questioning my methods, Mr. Blythe?" Mr. Phillips asked coldly.

"I – no…that is…" he trailed off.

"Is there anything else, then?"

Gilbert looked down. "No, sir."

"Good. But since you're so eager to be punished, perhaps you wouldn't mind washing off the chalkboard."

"Yes, sir."

He grabbed a bucket from one of the shelves and made his way out to the brook for some water.

Charlie Sloane fell into step with him just outside and regarded him in silence for a moment, blue goggle eyes wide.

"What?" Gilbert finally asked.

"You hurt Anne's feelings dreadfully," Charlie said solemnly.

"Well, what about me? _She_ hurt _my_ head," responded Gilbert, trying to make light of the episode.

But Charlie would have none of it. He frowned at Gilbert, who hastily continued, "I know. I do feel like a prize idiot, especially for making her suffer like that on the platform. I could smash Phillips's owl glasses for that. But honestly, Charlie, you have to admit that she overreacted a bit."

Charlie shook his head. "_Everyone_ knows she's touchy about her hair, Gil. So why—"

"Well, _I_ didn't," Gilbert interrupted, starting to grow irritated with Charlie's pompous tone.

"Don't you know what happened with Mrs. Lynde?"

"Well, yes, I suppose…just that Anne 'flew at her' for something or other. What—"

"My mother," Charlie said, "told me that Mrs. Lynde told Anne when she first met her that she was ugly and had hair as red as carrots. _That's_ why Anne got all mad."

"Oh," said Gilbert, stooping down to dip the bucket in the brook. "That makes sense…I suppose. But _I_ didn't say she was ugly."

"She most certainly isn't!" Charlie flared.

Startled, Gilbert nearly dropped the bucket in the water. "I said I _didn't_ say that, Charlie."

Charlie made no reply…he was acting a little strange, actually, Gilbert reflected. He kept straightening his body up and taking deep breaths.

"I thought I understood girls," Gilbert said, chalking Charlie's peculiarity up to innate Sloanishness and turning back toward the school. "I mean, mostly they seem to like being teased, don't they? But Anne wouldn't even look at me, even after I apologized, nice-like."

Charlie took another deep breath, seemed to gather himself up, and stepped in front of Gilbert. "I have to fight you, Gil," he said with great solemnity.

This time Gilbert did drop the bucket, along with his jaw.

"You" – cough – "have to" – hiccup – "_fight me_?" he repeated in disbelief, choking back laughter.

Charlie nodded.

"Very funny," Gilbert said, laughing now in earnest. He picked up the bucket and turned around to head back toward the brook to refill it.

Charlie circled around to stand confrontationally in front of him again.

"You're serious." Gilbert's eyes widened incredulously. "But…_why_?"

"You insulted Anne."

Gilbert began to laugh again. "What are you, her knight in shining armor?"

Charlie stood up a bit straighter. "Tomorrow at four, behind Mr. Bell's shed in the spruce grove?"

The situation was ceasing to be amusing and growing simply preposterous. "You're not going to fight me, Charlie," Gilbert said decisively. "This is ridiculous."

"Why? Are you afraid?"

"Afraid? I'm nearly a head taller than you, Charlie! Besides, I'd never lick my best chum!"

"What makes you so sure you'd lick me?"

Gilbert just looked at him. "Julia was right," he said. "You _are_ gone on Anne Shirley!"

"Nom'not," Charlie mumbled.

"You are."

"Fine," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "So what? She's loads smarter than all the other girls, and more interesting too!"

She _was_ more interesting, Gilbert thought. The crack of the slate had certainly cemented _that_ fact into his skull.

He sighed. "Look, Charlie," he began, setting down the bucket, "There's no need to fight. I didn't intend to offend Anne – I just wanted to get her attention. I had no idea her hair was a sore subject. I mean, it shouldn't be…it's certainly very…I mean…it's not ugly," he finished lamely.

Charlie gasped. "You like her!"

"What? Don't be daft," said Gilbert lightly. "I don't even know her. But I do feel bad, truly. _And_ I apologized to her. So there's really no reason for fighting."

Charlie weighed this for a moment. "All right, then," he said.

They began to make their way to the brook again. Then – "You really think of me as your best chum?"

"Well, I did, but then you wanted to fight me…" Gilbert shook his head, smiling. "Of course I do."

"I'm sorry I didn't save your seat for you. Moody—"

"Oh, that's all right. Besides, if I'd been sitting with you, I wouldn't have had today's delightful, slate-splitting experience…and wouldn't that be a shame." He rubbed the sore spot on his head.

Charlie laughed. "You did look most awful funny," he admitted. "I've never seen anyone so surprised in my life!"

"Can you blame me?"

Gilbert dipped the bucket into the water again. "Anne has the worst temper I've ever seen. And that includes old Abel Fletcher, my uncle George's father, who once got so angry at a rock that wouldn't budge in his fields that in a rage he kicked it and broke his toe."

"Usually Anne's awful nice," Charlie began. "And she—"

"Do you think she'll stay mad at me?" Gilbert asked suddenly.

"Naw," said Charlie. "She forgave Mrs. Lynde after only a few days, after all. Got down on her knees and apologized, Mother said." He grinned up at Gilbert. "And you're only a shade more insufferable than Mrs. Lynde can be at times, so I'd give it about a week."

Gilbert glared at his friend and emptied about half the bucket's contents on his shoulder before he jumped out of the way.

Presently Mr. Phillips came down the path, on his way back to Eben Wright's house, where he boarded.

"Gilbert? The chalkboards?" he said, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"On my way, sir," Gilbert called. He filled the bucket yet again.

Charlie brushed the dripping water off his shirt. "Maybe I should lick you for that," he said.

Gilbert laughed exaggeratedly as he made his way back to the porch. "Keep practicing your left hook then," he said. "Oh…and be sure to eat your fill of porridge. Heard it helps you grow."

"When it doesn't kill you, you mean," Charlie called as he hustled down the road.

Gilbert ventured into the now-empty classroom. Anne's slate was still lying, in two jagged pieces, on the floor. He picked them up and regarded them for a moment.

This slate isn't a flimsy piece of work by any means, he thought. She must have brought it down with some force to crack it so.

He set the bucket down. Why, there's writing on this, he noted, fitting the slate halves back together.

Anne had, apparently, been doodling before she'd begun to daydream. Amidst the several formless scribbles, however, a few names were scrawled, in loopy, fancy lettering: Anne Shirley, Anne Cordelia Shirley, Lady Cordelia Anne Fitzgerald, Countess Cordelia Fitzgerald.

What on earth? Rather bewildered, and, unsure what else to do, he lifted the lid of Anne's desk and quickly set the slate pieces inside.

Gilbert picked up the bucket again, grabbed a rag from the shelf, and trudged over to the chalkboard. _What_ a day, he thought, dipping the rag in the bucket and slowly beginning to wipe. At least it can't get any more bizarre.

* * *

****

**Citations: **Anne and Diana's conversation above is from_Anne of Green Gables,_ "A Tempest in the School Teapot" (p. 132).

This sentence, and some of the dialogue below, is taken directly from _Anne of Green Gables,_ "A Tempest in the School Teapot" (p. 131-136).

**Author's Note**: Thanks for reading! As always, please review! I'll try my darnedest to get Chapter 4 out more quickly than Chapter 3, at the very least. Up next is, of course, the incident that really cements Anne's feelings Gilbert-ward for quite a long time.


End file.
